


On flexibility of dead cats

by Lokuro



Series: Curse of Strahd Verse [10]
Category: Curse of Strahd - Fandom, Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Just Add Kittens, Metaphyiscal magical theory as escapism, Off-screen torture, Vargas & Izek, sociopathic magical boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:00:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29845317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokuro/pseuds/Lokuro
Summary: A short series of drabbles for our most amazing DM <3 covering some creepy, hilarious and frankly terrifying aspects of Barovian life~On some aspects of Barovian economy: Case 4 "Lack of suitable job opportunities for the enterprising youth may result in deterioration of their natural resources."
Series: Curse of Strahd Verse [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1802551
Kudos: 6





	On flexibility of dead cats

Victor squinted at the page. The candlelight flickered in a steady whiff of air creeping from the outside. Despite the small roof window being shut tight, distant chanting and unpleasant smoke crept in through all sorts of cracks and fissures of the old manor. Judging by the smoke, it seemed like it was one of his father's festival nights. Again. The candle flickered anew, and Victor frowned at the unreliable light. He pressed a finger to the warm wax, and the candle started glowing from the inside, emitting a controllable, stable brightness that would burn for precisely one hour, not a second less. After a moment's hesitation, Victor changed his mind, and the color turned into a subtle violet glow. Because he could.

He turned the page, focused again, and his fingers fell into the well-practiced gestures on their own accord. He might be clumsy, and his father would criticize even the way he held a fork, but the magical sigils always felt natural to him. Even more so today. Barely fourteen and today was the first time he finished the warding glyph until he was satisfied with the intricate lacework of lines and swirls, until the sigil was whole and singing with the potential energy he trapped in there, so that now Victor was ready to burst himself. Oh, how he wished someone would try to open the door! Nobody who would actually present a threat, obviously, somebody weak would suffice, just to test a theory.

Victor was quite tempted to ask a servant to bring him his meal upstairs, but what if the magic energy would not annihilate the body effectively enough? Aside from the fact that any more disappearing servants might raise suspicion — even in such a suitable environment for missing people as his home town, people could not vanish from one household without the townsfolk to start asking unpleasant questions after the third accident — thunder or lightning damage would still be out of question, too loud, too unsubtle. Cold and fire he had previously worked with, both very impressive. What about acid, though? Would pure energy transmuted to an acid spray retrain its physical qualities and melt the flesh away from the bones? That might be useful. He should try it one time, especially if it left the bones clean enough so that he could use them right away. Perhaps if he poured enough energy into the spell, converted it all into acid damage, and then let the trespasser soak in there for a while, he could deteriorate the limestone in their bones and make them all flexible and bendy. Now _that_ would make for one neat skeleton servant.

Victor looked down at his kitten army in various stages of decay and flexibility. He did not always dig out fresh corpses, some of them were a bit spoiled. Some little bones were missing, some rotten away. But that was fine; foul mimicry of life functioned well enough without them. "Cat One, come here," the oldest kitten limped towards Victor, its bony claws clattering upon the wooden attic floor. It was his oldest model, and the chill Victor felt when he first raised it was but a distant memory. Not the excitement, though... Victor picked the cat up by the vertebra and tested its flexibility. Medium. During the ministrations the skull looked at him with empty eye-holes; some of its teeth were broken, and the asymmetrical grin gave the dead cat a mischievous appearance. Maybe if Victor pushed the vertebrae with a magical hand just like that... A tiny crack indicated that the short experiment already came to an end, and the backbone was definitely brittle. Meh.

Victor stood up and brushed his breeches free from the fine bone powder. Cat One was now a loose heap of narrow white bones by his feet, its spine broken, and for a split second, an emotion not unlike sorrow for his first creation faintly clouded his gaze. Victor sniffed, and the moment passed as soon as he turned his thoughts onto the new project — _Flexible Cat One_ , which was definitely an improvement on the current design.

At some point, it started raining outside. The steady dribble of raindrops was monotonous and loud enough to cover up the light footsteps as Victor made his way downstairs into his father's den. Most of the books he sneaked up to his attic were borrowed from the library, but a few rare volumes were kept locked up in the private study. Like the one about the interaction of magical energy and the matter of the human body, whatever might be the reasons his father would need it to hand for his mayoral duties.

The first mistake that Victor made was that he lingered in the study. With the old volume already in his hands, he greedily palmed through the thick pages. The first chapter addressed the theory of raw magical energy and its transformation into its various shapes and aspects. Up to the printing date of the book, the scholars were still arguing about whether the proto-energy already hold the infinity possibilities and the caster would just pluck the one he needed from the Weaver's body and disregard the other probabilities, or if the proto-magic was but a blank raw field to be filled up to the casters needs and abilities, and therefore, more powerful spells were not inherently harmful to the great Weaver if the caster was skillful enough to control them (and of course it only applied to the arcane magic, as its divine twin was a mystery for the most scholars, and thus, poorly studied and unreliable). The discussion then split into various controversial threads whether the Weaver's body was quintessential ( _exempli gratia_ based on moduli fields) or more homogeneous in its nature, and subsequently, whether the cosmological constant of the Weaver's body was steadily diminishing through spells that ultimately converted the primal chaotic energy into the entropy-negative spells ( _id est_ well-arranged and ∴ less chaotic in nature (with the exception of wild magic)), thus, accelerating its collapse.

"Go back to sleep, Lydia, it's none of your business. Izek will take care of it."

Victor closed the book and panicked (or rather panicked and then closed the book), which was his second mistake. Instead of remembering that he was invisible, he put the book back, adjusted it, re-adjusted it, so that nobody would be none the wiser, and then plunged under the table. Victor still used the _invisibility_ spell without a second thought because he was not stupid to leave his attic while being visible, where anyone could start talking to him. But he was still not used to the wishful idea that nobody could see him, or scold him, or point out a way in which he was not living up to their expectations, or — the worst of all — sigh and murmur "Oh, my poor baby boy" upon seeing him.

The door to the study opened, and from unter the thick mahogany table Victor saw three pairs of feet coming in. One of them in military boots, one dressed in rich shoes, and the last only clad in cheap ones. "Did you desecrate the Motivational Poster on purpose?" His father already sounded accusing enough when somebody failed to divine his wishes — how scary he was when somebody actually defied his laws was blood-chilling.

"No, I swear, I was just stupid, Mylord! I thought it funny to draw the horns and a stupid goatee, I swear, I swear! Please, Mylord!"

A wet slap cut into the panicked begging. There was silence, and then the room filled with the smell of burned flesh. The unlucky peasant started sobbing, and Victor went pale, acquiring a greenish sheen over his usual anemic features. He wished the fool would cry less loud, it was... distracting him from the escape plans.

"I beg you, Mylord."

"Izek, start with the fingers."

  
The nauseating smell of burned flesh intensified and was followed by a strangely loud crack, at which Victor absentmindedly commented in his head that the sound was less brittle than the one produced by vertebra of his Cat One, probably due to the higher percentage of subcutaneous fat and supporting muscles. Izek still hadn't said a word, but judging by the increasingly desperate cries of the peasant, he was virtuously fulfilling his duty while Victor was cowering underneath the desk, knees hugged to his chest and shivering. Various escape routes presented themselves only to be discarded and alternates sought. Nothing seemed feasible. His mind wouldn't work. Everything was jammed, overloaded, and the appalling thought of the retribution left him weak and clammy with cold sweat. He closed his eyes and tried not to imagine what father would do to him if he found out. Surely, Vargas would not harm his only heir.

The voice of the nameless man cracked, it sounded like he was choking on his cries. Or bile. Or blood. Victor tried to swallow, but his spit seemed to defy the gravity. Maybe in sympathy to the choking man. Victor pressed a hand to his mouth. It would be hard to explain why somebody puked under his father's desk. The study grew quite. The thick smoked-filled silence only interrupted by grunting and weak noises. There was something deeply undignified in hearing a grown man weep like that. The study of bones and skeletons seemed less attractive with each sob. With each whiff of blood and a heart-wrenching wailing. Outside of his own head, Victor could feel an intense dread like bone-freezing waters rising about him, each muffled cry adding another drop. He didn't know how deep the waters were, but he knew he would drown the moment it touched his nose.

"Plea...ghhh."

The words blurred and whirled inside of Victor's head even after he pressed the hands on his ears. He was not sure if it was a mercy or a curse when the sounds lost their humanity and turned to some repetitive, animal cries. It was then that Victor knew that one day he would have to kill his father.


End file.
